Shohei Imamura Overview

When Boston's Museum of Fine Arts launched a retrospective of Imamura's films, it was entitled, "Pigs, Pimps and Pornographers: The Films of Shohei Imamura." The films' brutal sexuality and unsparing scrutiny of a certain Japanese underbelly have made Imamura one of... [more]

When Boston's Museum of Fine Arts launched a retrospective of Imamura's films, it was entitled, "Pigs, Pimps and Pornographers: The Films of Shohei Imamura." The films' brutal sexuality and unsparing scrutiny of a certain Japanese underbelly have made Imamura one of the most controversial filmmakers in Japan. With the death of Kurosawa in 1998, some also consider him Japan's greatest living director. As actor Ken Ogata explains, "The themes of Imamura-san's pictures are: lamentation of people living at the bottom of the social scale, crawling over the ground, and their strong energy to survive." Imamura pulls back the pristine curtain of Japanese society, exposing the inner workings of a people on the brink. In Imamura's paradigm, though, humanity overcomes the suffering thrust in its path and discovers a bold nobility. In "The Ballad of Narayama" Imamura turns back the clock 100 years to delve into the inner workings of a mountain-dwelling feudal society. This world, like the one in Jerzy Kosinski's "The Painted Bird," is governed by brutal customs: male babies serve as fertilizer; the punishment for theft is live burial; and according to religious dictates, all 70-year-olds are cast out onto Narayama mountain to die of exposure. Coming from a generation whose consciousness is dominated by the atomic devastation of Hiroshima, Imamura questions whether we are really any different now than we were in our supposedly less civilized and more ruthless stages. Imamura is one of only four directors to win the Palme d'Or at Cannes twice: for "The Ballad" in 1983 and "The Eel" in 1997. Drawing on his own experiences selling liquor and cigarettes on the black market after World War II, Imamura's films shock and disturb, portraying life's inherent cruelty with brutal verisimilitude. Treating his characters with humor and redemption, however, Imamura infuses these unsympathetic environments with a vitality that overcomes horror like a beautiful sunset prevailing over a bloody battlefield. [show less]